Mind wandering, meaning, and action

走神是一种普遍存在的认知现象，常见于教育和工作环境以及其他日常活动中。一个核心问题是如何看待这种普遍性。一方面，走神可以被描述为一种不受欢迎的执行控制失败。如果这是一个合理的观点，我们应该寻求最大限度地减少走神的方法。另一方面，走神可能被解释为一个人的心理目标的优先级水平的正常和适当的变化的产物。例如，执行当前目标任务的目标可能暂时变得不如思考其他事情的目标重要。因此，走神可能会促进合适的甚至是必要的过程，如计划，创造力，以及心理和身体的稳态。如果后一种观点是正确的，我们应该试图描述在什么情况下以及在多大程度上走神是有益的。为了理清这些可能性，我们需要了解走神的本质，以及它与正在进行的认知活动的关系。拟议的研究是为了发展这样一个理解，通过统一的理论分析的走神：特别是，我认为，走神转移资源的解释和分配的意义，当前的情况下。作为一种简写，我把这称为手头任务的“有意义的处理”。反过来，有意义的处理涉及将当前的情况与存储在记忆中的语义知识和先前的经验联系起来。因此，由于一个人进行这种所需的记忆提取的能力有限，可能会出现走神的缺陷。在拟议的研究中，这一总体性的论文适用于现象的行动控制，认知控制和文本理解。在行动的控制，走神被预测为干扰的能力，调整行动的基础上最近的经验;在认知控制领域，走神被预测为干扰的能力，根据指令或设置调节任务的性能;和在文本理解，走神被预测为干扰使用知识和经验的文本记忆表征的建设。实验描述测试和扩展这些预测在每个领域。因此，拟议的研究提供了一个基础广泛的计划，调查的性质走神的缺陷。长期目标是了解走神现象及其如何影响认知表现。特别是，在记忆提取方面提出的理论分析提供了重要的线索，当走神会干扰正在进行的生产活动，当它不会。

Mind wandering is a ubiquitous cognitive phenomena, common in education and work environments and other day-to-day activities. A central question is how one should view this prevalence. On the one hand, mind wandering can be characterized as an undesirable failure of executive control. If this is a reasonable perspective, we should seek ways to minimize mind wandering. On the other hand, mind wandering might be interpreted as a product of the normal and appropriate variations in the levels of priority of ones mental goals. For example, the goal of performing the current target task may become temporarily less important than the goal of thinking about other things. As such, mind wandering might foster suitable or even needful processes such as planning, creativity, and mental and physical homeostasis. If this latter perspective is correct, we should attempt to delineate under what circumstances and to what degree mind wandering is beneficial. In order to disentangle these possibilities, we need to understand the nature of mind wandering and how it is related to ongoing cognitive activities. The proposed research is intended to develop such an understanding through a unified theoretical analysis of mind wandering: In particular, I argue that mind wandering diverts resources from the interpretation and assignment of meaning to the current context. As a shorthand, I refer to this as “meaningful processing” of the task at hand. In turn, meaningful processing involves relating the current situation to one’s semantic knowledge and prior experience stored in memory. Thus, deficits in mind wandering may occur because one’s ability to carry out this required memory retrieval is limited. In the proposed research, this overarching thesis is applied to phenomena in the control of action, cognitive control, and text comprehension. In the control of action, mind wandering is predicted to interfere with the ability to tune actions on the basis of recent experience; in the domain of cognitive control, mind wandering is predicted to interfere with the ability to modulate task performance based on instructions or set; and in text comprehension, mind wandering is predicted to interfere with the use of knowledge and experience in the construction of text memory representations. Experiments are described to test and extend these predictions in each of these domains. The proposed research thus provides a broad-based program investigating the nature of mind-wandering deficits. The long-term objective is to gain an understanding of the phenomenon of mind wandering and how it affects cognitive performance. In particular, the proposed theoretical analysis in terms of memory retrieval provides important clues as to when mind wandering will interfere with ongoing productive activity and when it will not.